


there's no place like

by calembours



Category: The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Gen, Surreal
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-11-25
Updated: 2012-11-25
Packaged: 2017-11-19 11:56:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 488
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/573008
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/calembours/pseuds/calembours
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Steve Rogers's nightmares involving the aftermath of fighting Loki is twisted to fit a Wizard of Oz setting.</p>
            </blockquote>





	there's no place like

Crows scatter when Steve sits up and the sky is clear and smooth. He can barely see over the tops of the wheat field, but he follows the grooves between the rows until he comes to the wreck of his aunt and uncle's house. Boards are broken and the walls are split, and the roof is half-caved in where the weather vane tipped, snapped, and found a place to rest.

Steve trips over the legs of a woman he cannot reach. As cold and as still as she is, it probably doesn't matter, but Steve gets the sense of having missed something - a chance or maybe an appointment. He's not sure which. The crows gather like a shadow on the broken porch. With beaks clicking, they stare at Steve and seem to ask 'now what will you do?'

He leaves them on the porch and goes back into the field, trying to find his way.

-

The pole where the scarecrow should be is empty, with the bar bent in half like it bore a sudden, great weight. Steve pulls himself up and looks out over he shifting corn, sees the beginning of a forest near by. Beyond that the horizon ends with a mountain range, and a glimmer of blue light that might simply be an evening star.

Apples fall in rotting heaps from he gnarled forest trees when Steve quietly follows the road through. The road turns to brick, and then to stone, and for a solid mile becomes even and dark leading up to a clockwork house. The gears don't move and the valves don't shift, and standing still under the plastic overhang is a man of metal.

The metal man has his chest ripped open, wires and tubes visible inside. His hands reach out in front of him, maybe pushing someone away, maybe telling someone to stop. The house is as empty as the metal man's eyes, and Steve doesn't linger.

-

Steve doesn't remember how he gets to the poppy field.

Lightning wakes him, bright cracks ripping across the sky as it starts to rain. Steve pulls cobweb from his chest, the curve of his collar, and from around his thighs. It washes away with the rain and so does the drowsiness, leaving him with a shivering focus that propels him through the drooping flowers and up the hill.

The city is shut down with the oncoming storm, with its windows boarded shut and its people tucked away. Steve drags himself through the flooding streets and dodges sputtering gutters, almost as if the buildings themselves were breaking above him, shingles and brick falling down.

He makes it to the tower where the door is broken open, and shoves his way inside.

-

He finds a heavy velvet curtain, but it's already flung open. A burnt broom lays inside an empty basket, strings and pierced balloons in a ring around it.

Steve just wants to go home.


End file.
